“Then I will not detain you, sir,” the lieutenant said.
Jeffrey hesitated for an instant. “Lieutenant . . . as one fighting man to another, are you in contact with your superiors?”
The lieutenant swallowed. “No, sir, I am not. The city telegraph and telephone lines appear to be inoperable or under enemy control.”
“The Chosen are landing in force at the docks.” That was less than half a kilometer away. “Lieutenant, without support, you haven’t a prayer. I’d strongly advise you withdraw until you do get in contact with your chain of command.”
It would be an even better idea to ditch the uniforms and weapons and hide in a cellar, then pretend to be harmless laborers, but he didn’t think the young Imperial would take that sort of advice.
“If I have no orders, I have my duty; but thank you, Captain Farr. There are better than thirty thousand Imperial military personnel in Corona. If we all do something, the situation may yet be salvaged. You’d better go, this isn’t your fight.”
The hell it isn’t. It wasn’t his battle, though. If every Imperial officer had this one’s aggression and instincts, Corona could have been saved. That was very unlikely.
He looked over his shoulder. Two of the Imperial soldiers were driving the car up to the barricade, and others were pushing aside a cart to give it room to pass.
“You understand, of course,” the lieutenant went on, “I must commandeer your vehicle.”
Jeffrey hadn’t understood anything of the sort—although it would be invaluable, particularly with the communications network down. Cars weren’t common in Corona. And it didn’t make much sense to object, not when the Imperial had fifty or sixty armed men at his back. Lucretzia seemed more inclined to argue; Jeffrey took her by the arm and hurried her past.
“Where can we go without the car?” she hissed.
“Where could we go with it? The main roads are blocked. I’m trying to get to a safe house. Now move.”
They walked quickly up the street. The crowds were thicker here, but milling around as if they weren’t sure where to go. That included numbers in Imperial military uniforms. Columns of smoke were rising to the air from dozens of points in the city now. He looked at his watch. 11:00 hours.
BAAAAMM. A volley from the barricade a hundred meters behind them. The gatling there cut loose with a slow braaaap . . . braaaap as the operators turned its crank. Jeffrey half-turned, then recognized the next sound.
“Down!” he shouted, and pancaked, carrying the woman with him.
The whistling screech ended in a sharp crack about twenty meters back. Someone fell thrashing across Jeffrey’s legs. He pushed at them with his feet, but the body resisted with the boneless slackness of a sack of rice; he had to roll onto his back and push with one boot to get the twitching weight free. That gave him an excellent view of what was coming up the roadway. Even at several hundred meters it looked huge, a rhomboid shape of riveted steel armor leaking steam along its flanks, with the Land’s sunburst on its bow. Endless belts of linked metal plates supported it on either side. Between the top and bottom track each flank held a sponson-mounted cannon; 50mm by the look, light naval quick-firers. On the top of the boxy hull was a round turret mounting two thick shapes that must be the new water-cooled automatic machine-guns Intelligence had been reporting.
They were. The turret swiveled and the muzzles of the automatics flashed, with a sound like endless ripping canvas. Bullets chewed into the Imperial’s barricade in a continuous stream, ripping wood into splinters and silencing the ineffectual rifles. Men turned and ran; the lieutenant waved his sword in their faces, trying to rally them. Then the other side-mounted cannon in the Chosen tank cut loose. The shell landed nearly at the Imperial officer’s feet, exploding in a puff of smoke with a malignant red snap at its core. One of the lieutenants boots was left, toppling over slowly. The rest of him was splashed across the paving blocks. In the silence that followed they could hear the tooth-grating squeal of steel on stone as the Chosen fighting vehicle ground up the slope towards them.